death to capslock

Random thoughts on DH

2017-01-04T12:50:00Z

Posted by: star-dragon5.livejournal.com

Hello, all! Nice to meet you. This is my first post, so please be nice to me.

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Voldemort's Strange Logic

2015-12-06T16:25:00Z

Posted by: condwiramurs.livejournal.com

I promise I'm still chipping away at Indestructible - I'm just in the middle of a frantic effort to complete my dissertation draft before the end of the semester. I should have another Indestructible piece up over the holidays though. Thanks for being patient!

Until then, I have a little question to toss out for consideration. It's been occupying my mind for a bit.

Question: Why did Voldemort believe that it was necessary to kill to gain the Wand's mastery?

Because he, of all people, should have known that it wasn't. If it were true, Albus Dumbledore would never have had it.

And he did believe, quite firmly, that Albus did.

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POTTERMORE: The Potter Family

2015-09-22T21:04:00Z

Posted by: radicalhighway.livejournal.com

I've been a lurker of this place for so long! I've decided to post my first entry... I hope it's enjoyable.

The old Pottermore was scrapped and another one is going to take its place. Here I thought it couldn't get any less interesting, but it did. Supposedly, there's going to be something similar to the old thing that will be added. I found the FAQ page to be absolutely hillarious, so I thought it would be funny to share a few snippets.

This is where you’ll be able to read brand new writing by J. K. Rowling (yes, it’s canon!), check out magical characters, objects, spells and places, reminisce about the first time you read the books, ruminate on advice from the great Dumbledore, speculate about Newt Scamander, try to guess the identity of the Cursed Child, fall in love with the stories all over again and SO MUCH MORE.

So yes, these thing is canon and it's very important that we all know this. JKR really likes to tell people what to think, there's no such thing as readership interpretation, and she's a real hack, because she didn't include any of this in the series and instead chose to spend her time writing about nonsense.

The good thing about it is that there's more "canon" stuff to spork. It's amazing how I used to love this series until a certain point, but then it became so bad I get entertainment out of mocking it, for years too. Pottermore was really slow in the updates by the end tho, so expect it to go exactly like the books. Really fun when it starts, bland and lazy after awhile.

The Cursed Child... Uhm... Must be every Slytherin that has ever existed... Remember though, choices make you who you are. Except if you're Tom Riddle. That one was rotten since conception. Oh no, I know, the Cursed Child is Tom Riddle. Such a pair, the Cursed Child and the Boy Who Lived.

Also a moment of silent for the great Dumbledore. I almost cried but I'm over 20 so I managed to hold myself. Imagine if I cried, I'd be classified as a Cho Chang, not a Ginny Weasley.

From the bottom of my Hermione-loving heart, welcome to the new and improved Pottermore.

The Cho Chang badge of tears belongs to me after all.

We have so much more to give you; writing, movies, plays, books, characters, places, backstories, and it’s rumoured that discovering your very own Patronus is also in the works...And the icing on the cauldron cake? The new Pottermore logo is in J.K. Rowling’s own handwriting.

The icing on the cake of the website is JKR writing a word in her own handwritting. There's setting the bar low and then there's this.

Now onto her lovely backstory about the Potter family.

( The Potter Family by J. K. Rowling )

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Harry Potter Abridged! DH Chapter 36

2015-08-30T22:23:00Z

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

LAST CHAPTER OF THE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

( The end is nigh! )

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Harry Potter Abridged! DH Chapter 35

2015-08-29T22:41:00Z

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

Might as well continue this sequence.

( Read Chapter 35 )

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Gollum not Gandalf: Meditations on Albus

2015-08-22T23:47:00Z

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

Another spark struck from Condwiramurs’ “Indestructable” series. I started this, then got distracted by fresh posts and had to address them first. This was sparked by Part II, in which she meditated on Galadriel’s gift to Frodo: a light in dark places. And on the fact that only Gollum’s inner struggle, his better self against his worst, had him placed to step in when Frodo’s will finally failed.

Merciful goddess, Condwiramurs, you are right. We all thought that Jo had modeled Albus on Gandalf, but he’s really a second Gollum. (With a dollop of that silver-tongued wizard who had the hubris to call himself “The White” and to set himself up as an advisor to temporal rulers.)

Gollum. At once the protagonists’ guide and their betrayer.
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Harry Potter Abridged! DH Chapter 22

2015-08-01T18:20:00Z

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

[They crash-land in a field somewhere]

Ron: I can’t believe that man! To sell Harry to the Death Eaters! Disgusting coward! I can’t believe someone as noble as Luna is related to him!

( Read Chapter 22 )

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Harry Potter Abridged! DH Chapter 21

2015-07-30T22:02:00Z

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

Lovegood: So, as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, the Deathly Hallows are an old legend that not everyone believes is true—but I’m one of those people who does believe it.

( Read Chapter 21 )

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Ignotus and the Mirror: a Response to Terri_Testing and Jodel

2015-05-15T21:50:00Z

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

So I have a theory about Ignotus’s connection to the Mirror of Erised, inspired by the recent essay by Terri_Testing, and particularly one of Jodel’s comments. This theory assumes that at least some of the information in the legend of the three brothers is true, but doesn’t require that it be completely true (though it can be). Essentially, Ignotus built the Mirror in an (unsuccessful) attempt to communicate with his dead brothers.

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Death's own cloak

2013-12-17T20:22:00Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

The cloak has always seemed the odd Hallow out. It makes you invisible, but no more invisible than any other invisibility cloak. Dumbledore said vaguely that the cloak could "protect" anyone under it, but we see that you can easily be Petrified while under the cloak, and so presumably other curses won't have any trouble getting through either. Its only other special power seems to be not getting weaker over time. How can that measure up next to a super-powerful, semi-sapient want and a stone that (seemingly) lets you talk to dead people?

I finally realized that there's one power the cloak might well have, which would fit in seamlessly with everything JKR set up for it. It's just that the characters never had occasion to test it.( Read more... )

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Another tidbit on the Cloak

2013-11-20T13:52:00Z

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

The Cloak makes one disconnected from other people, right?

So that effect is probably mitigated in respect to, and only to, people who are under it with you. People you share it with, if you share it with anyone.

So Hermione and Ron are more real to Harry than anyone else.

And... remember us complaining in DH9 that Harry's indifferent to the Weasleys' fate, the family that had taken him in and treated him as their own, until he thinks of Ginny?

He was ordered to keep his cloak on his person at all times the previous spring, right? If you wanted to snog your girlfriend without ticking off her big brother, your best friend, by being too blatent about it, what would you do?

So that's why Ginny's more real to him afterwards than most people.

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Product of the Department of Mysteries

2013-11-19T18:49:00Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

On oneandthetruth's last DH chapter commentary, an interesting thread compared the Mirror of Erised to the Resurrection Stone in its seductive (and potentially deadly) powers of showing something/someone you want.

There's another object somewhat like that: the Veil in the Department of Mysteries. There are voices coming from behind the Veil - voices Luna believes to be those of the dead - and Harry feels tempted to walk through it.

Well, okay, Harry is being trained to have a death wish. But maybe that just means he's more susceptible.

The Department of Mysteries is a research facility. One which we know has produced tangible items now available for (restricted) public use, such as Time-Turners. (Whether they invented them or improved on an existing idea, we don't know.) I seriously doubt they've only produced one artifact ever. So what else might they have made?

They also have the locked room full of either love or Amortensia, depending whom you ask. The Mirror's ability to reflect your heart's desire is suggestively similar to the potion's ability to reflect the scent of what you desire.

A big glass mirror sounds like a relatively recent invention (unless you posit a long history of magical glassmaking, but wizards seem to adapt Muggle technology more often than the other way around). I propose that the Mirror of Erised is a product of the Department of Mysteries, combining attributes of Amortensia and the Veil which the DoM was able to partially replicate/adapt after long study.

Next question: are the Stone and the Veil related? Maybe Mr. Death, whoever he was, created both, and the DoM only got ahold of one of them. Whether this makes the Veil a fourth Hallow, left out of Beedle's version for numerical reasons, is not clear. Possibly it's a super-Hallow, and you can be Master of Death^TM with it alone? Or it's a death-related magical... thing... which shares some properties with the Hallows, but it isn't the same class of artifact and mastery isn't an issue in its case.

Or maybe the Veil is more ancient and the Stone is a portable adaptation created centuries ago by the DoM's first head researcher, Johannus Mors, along with a couple of other powerful items which also escaped the premises and have not been replicated. (And Death took the second lab assistant for his own...)

Thoughts? Fanfic links?

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Deathly Hallows, Chapter 22: The Deathly Hallows

2013-11-16T22:01:00Z

Posted by: oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

Author's Note: I apologize for the months I took between postings. It started out because of tables.

The only way I could make sense of King's Cross was by creating a table that laid out the skinned baby incidents in detail. After I did that, I realized chapter 1 contained a similar incident and cried out for a table, as well as a detailed comparison between the two chapters, so I did those things.

When I reached the point in my postings in which Xeno Lovegood gets tortured by the DEs, and Hermione gets tortured by Bellatrix, I realized those were also similar situations that were handled completely differently by the author. I made tables for those incidents, then realized I'd have to rewrite the Malfoy Manor chapter spork to accommodate and compare them. After living with DH for 6 months (I started reading it and writing the sporking in December 2012 and last posted in June 2013), I just couldn't face that. I needed a vacation from it. A nice, long vacation.

( Read more... )

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Deathly Hallows, Chapter 21: The Tale of the Three Brothers

2013-06-02T23:05:00Z

Posted by: oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

Xeno tells the Trio the DH symbol is not “dark” in the sense Viktor Krum thought. He adds he was wearing the symbol in case another believer saw him and could help him find the Hallows. Isn’t it great that he used someone’s else happy social occasion to promote his own selfish, crazy agenda?

He then asks if they know “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” Ron and Hermione say they do, but Harry doesn’t. This shows how intellectually disinterested he is: He’s had the Beedle book sitting around for five months and has been sitting in a tent with it for four months, frequently bored out of his mind, with nothing else to do for entertainment, but even though it’s a short book, he still hasn’t read it! Sheesh! And I’m supposed to find this guy admirable enough to be worthy of emulation? I mean, that is one of the characteristics of a hero/heroine.

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Deathly Hallows, Chapter 20: Xenophilius Lovegood

2013-06-02T22:57:00Z

Posted by: oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

Hermione is still pouting the next morning. I’m wondering if her real problem is not that Ron left, but that she didn’t. Is she angry at him because he had the guts to admit they were blowing it and take a time out, while she just kept trailing along after Harry like a lost house elf? I think she’s definitely mad because she’s always controlled Ron and their relationship. How dare he assert his independence of her! Who does he think he is? Her equal? In an AU, maybe. This is called the Potterverse after all, not the Ronverse.

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Deathly Hallows, Chapter 16: Godric's Hollow

2013-04-28T19:12:00Z

Posted by: oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

Is everybody still with me? I know it was hard to get through that last installment. Unfortunately, not much happens in this chapter, either. We have to plow through it before we get some excitement in chapter 17.

This chapter starts with a sickeningly sweet illustration of the Holy Family Potter Family Memorial Statue. Lily is holding baby Harry on her left, while she and James, on her right, gaze adoringly at their child. They all have little patties of snow on their heads, which makes them look like they’re wearing halos. *gag* That particular ornament would be the last headgear I would imagine James Potter wearing.

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Deathly Hallows, Chapter 14: The Thief

2013-04-21T19:17:00Z

Posted by: oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

When Harry comes to, he’s in some strange woods with Ron and Hermione. All three are changing back into themselves. Hermione is okay--of course, because the boys couldn’t survive without her--but Ron has Splinched. (I have to say, Rowling is very good at coming up with these silly sounding words.) With typical thoughtlessness, Harry has always considered Splinching a joke--until he sees his friend lying on the ground, gushing blood from a big chunk that’s been taken out of his arm.

Hermione puts Dittany on the wound to close it and explains how they got there: Yaxley grabbed onto her when they left, so when they landed, he was taken inside the Fidelius on 12GP. When she realized that, she Apparated them elsewhere to get away. She blames herself, but Harry both honorably and honestly says it’s his fault. See, Harry? I knew you should have Stunned Yaxley again before you took off.

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Deathly Hallows, Chapter 7: The Will of Albus Dumbledore

2013-03-24T19:59:00Z

Posted by: oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

Author’s note: It’s not a good idea to eat or drink while reading this installment. There’s some Snapish sarcasm at the end that may make you spray your computer. He’s not in the chapter, but I imagined what might happen if he were.

This chapter begins with Harry experiencing a Voldie-vision in his dreams. Ron wakes him up, and Harry asks if Ron knows who Gregorovitch is, since Harry thinks Voldy is looking for this man.

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Into the Valley of Death[ly Hallows]: An Introduction

2013-03-13T16:38:00Z

Posted by: oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

In the Deadly Hollows Sporking Community, erastes began the festivities by saying this: “I have to just mention the preface page with excerpts from Aeschylus and William Penn. This made my heart sink, because invariably I find that crap books are prefaced by arty-farty poetry and prose. Just once I'd like to see a preface quoting Enid Blyton or Dan Brown. It would sing to me of hope.” With that in mind, I decided to emulate JKR by beginning my sporking of DH by quoting Alfred, Lord Tennyson. “The Charge of the Light Brigade” seems to express the attitude a person needs have when sporking the second-longest and (first) dullest of the Harry Potter books. If that sounds grandiose, well, just remember that in the five-and-a-half years since DH came out, only one person on DTCL, montavilla, has made it through sporking the entire book. Saylee tried, but had to quit after seven chapters because she just couldn’t take any more.

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Filling some gaps about the first war (part 1)

2012-07-29T11:45:00Z

Posted by: oryx_leucoryx

This will be the first of some posts attempting to fill gaps in canon. In some places I rely closely on canon, in others canon is silent and I try to connect whatever dots I find, somehow.

Tom's return to Britain:

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Dark Devices: Albus and the Suicide Stone

2011-09-08T00:20:00Z

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

“What was the temptation, the one that worked?” Margaret Atwood, “Marrying the Hangman”

In my essay “Death Unhallowed: The Suicide Stone,” I suggested that Albus put on Tom’s Horcrux-ring and invoked its curse because he’d been directed to do so by what appeared to him to be the spirits of the dead. But that raises as many questions as it answers, really. Severus implied that the lethal curse on the ring was utterly obvious: “It carries a curse, surely you realized that?” …

Dumbledore grimaced. “I… was a fool. Sorely tempted…”

“Tempted by what?”

Dumbledore did not answer. (DH 33)

Let’s explore this temptation a little further.

( Because )

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Dark Devices: the Marauder’s Map

2011-09-06T23:18:00Z

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

I’m checking a potential theory, all ye commanders of canon. Help me out here.

In the first books, Harry really doesn’t use his father’s cloak much at all. Does he?

( If )

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Possession of the Cloak

2011-08-31T23:09:00Z

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

“His passion … was the work he had taken over from Illyan….

No. The work Haroche had taken away from Illyan.

Oh.

… I’m blind, blind, blind! Motive! What’s an elephant got to do around here, to advance and be recognized?” Miles Vorkosigan in Memory, by Lois McMaster Bujold

A word in a prepositional phrase can sometimes make all the difference in the world.

Why was Albus in possession of the Cloak at the time of the Potters’ deaths?

( Marionros )

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(The Lack of) Horcrux-Hunting

2011-08-24T17:36:00Z

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

Back in my essay “The Keeper of the Keys,” I argued that Dumbledore didn’t start hunting Riddle’s Horcruxes until about 1995 because it took him until after Harry’s report of Tom’s boasts in the graveyard to realize that Tom had more Horcruxes than just Harry.

But there’s an even more fundamental problem. Why wasn’t Dumbledore hunting for Tom’s (presumably singular) Horcrux in, say, 1948? Or at least, after Tom’s return from the continent as “Lord Voldemort,” master of the Death Eaters?

( I )

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